the recent vote on renewing FISA #Section702 has only reinforced a conclusion I came to a while ago: fixing the law is noble but usually fruitless. instead we should push for strong encryption and federation and anyone who wants to pass laws that say unconstitutional mass surveillance is legal will have no option but to go screw themselves.

If your criteria is fruitfulness, you're giving federation quite a pass. You with a policy rather than technical implementation focus would have conclusion that technical enforcement of privacy and free speech is noble but usually fruitless reinforced every day. Mass surveillance, including physical, is getting cheaper by the day. There will be more of it. Both political and technical countermeasures are necessary; don't discount either.

@Mike privacy and security right now are, technically speaking, mostly disasters. Absolutely. The point of what I was saying wasn't to discount that, just to point out that I can actually do something about the technical side, but making policy changes with the current slate of politicians is probably hopeless.